On the steamy summer evening of July 13th, 2019, we carried our equipment up the sidewalk to a beautiful house set among other beautiful old houses.  We were in the heart of southeastern Atlanta, to investigate a house occupied by several college roommates who had been having experiences with a potential entity they called "Julia".  

We unpacked our gear, and Erin and Sam went downstairs to the basement to do baseline while Meridith and Kristin stayed upstairs to hear the clients' experiences and take notes.

The reports were varied, and sounded very interesting:

• Three different people witnessed the signs in the basement shaking loudly
  
• A spot in the basement upsets the dog, who barks at it late at night
  
• Lights turning on and off
  
• Similar dreams from different people of a woman in a white dress
  
• A series of three scratches on the wall late at night
  

We set up the IR cameras with two in the basement, one in the downstairs bedroom and one in the upstairs bedroom.  We began the investigation in the basement, and the clients joined us for the EVP session.  We like when the clients join us, because whatever energy or entity may be present might respond better to someone they are familiar with.  

We spent about 30 minutes in the basement, asking "Julia" questions.  We had a green grid pen light pointed at the wall that began flickering as if in answer to our questions.  Unfortunately upon further investigation at home, the device was still behaving oddly and we had to chalk it up to a malfunction.

We performed EVP sessions in the downstairs bedroom and upstairs bedroom, and collected plenty of recordings and footage to review.  

Upon review, we found we had no convincing EVPs or video footage.  Our sensitive also felt no impressions and got no messages, and thus we had no evidence of any sort of haunting in the house.

We are glad we were able to provide some peace of mind to the clients.  While we can't be sure "Julia" is not there, our extensive investigation turned up no sign of her.

The Covington House is a white, split-level suburban home, on a subdivision street corner.  It is backed by trees, and a solid 6 foot wooden fence.  The client invited us to investigate the house due to her experiences as a child.  This house was her childhood home, and her parents still live there.  As a child, the client experienced the intense feeling of being watched while in her bedroom.  The feeling was so severe, she could not sleep, and eventually moved down into the basement where she experienced relief from the sensation.  The client's mother occasionally still hears disembodied footsteps in the upstairs hallway, near the client's old bedroom.  

We began by setting up base camp with the monitor and camera box.  Next, we placed our four 1080p night vision cameras: one in the client's old bedroom, one looking down the hallway, one looking out onto the front porch landing, and one facing the living room.  We had all of the reported active areas covered.

Evidence review revealed nothing out of the ordinary.  There were a few sounds, but we decided they were either house settling noises, or breathing/moving noises from the team. 

Although we didn't catch any audio or video evidence at the Covington House, it was a good investigation to help the client, and to test out our new equipment.​  Next week, we will be doing an overnight investigation at Blood Mountain Cabins in Blairsville, GA.

Sloss Furnaces was a pig iron and steel production facility, built in 1881.  Unsafe working conditions, long hours, and lack of worker protections led to a number of violent accidents and deaths over the years.  It's no surprise that hauntings have been reported for decades, and that Sloss Furnaces is a hot destination for paranormal research groups.  Being only two hours away, BCPI could not resist checking out this amazing historic site.​

March 9th, 2019 was a very windy day in Birmingham, AL.  The wind whipped through the stacks and boilers, occasionally causing an eerie whistle.  Alongside the wind, there was a lot of background noise, with the nearby highway and almost constant freight trains running past.  While we did get a couple opportunities to do EVP sessions without other people around, most of our audio recordings were compromised, either by the wind, or the background noise.  This investigation was a daytime trip because reserving Sloss for an overnight investigation is quite expensive.  We believe activity can be just as intense in the daytime as overnight, so we weren't worried that being there during the day would affect the outcome.

The first room we checked out was the Power House. As we stepped onto the landing after climbing the stairs, we were hit with a sudden wave of intense psychic activity.   Our designated sensitive, Amber, wrote down what she was feeling.  The feeling was so intense that we all talked about it while it was happening, which is usually against the rules.  We prefer that if anyone experiences a psychic event, they write it down, and don't talk about it until after the investigation, so that other members' opinions are not affected during the investigation.  But this time, the feeling was so heavy and so terrible that we couldn't help but talk about it.  We are unaware whether this particular room had a death associated with it, but we would not be surprised if one or more people died there.  You can read more about each member's personal experiences in a forthcoming post.

We set up to do an EVP session in the Power House, placing our DVRs on a saw table.  Among other things, we asked if anyone had something bad happen to them in the room.  We hoped to be able to confirm the psychic experiences by capturing a relevant EVP.  Unfortunately all of our audio recordings from this session were compromised by background noise.  We did catch some interesting "whispering", but can't be sure whether it is part of the background noise or the strange watery sounding backdrop this particular DVR had.  (EVPs are best listened to with headphones.)​

Next, we set off to find the Boilers.  On our way, we encountered interesting sights that made for great photos.  We stopped to check out different locations, with our DVRs running the whole time just in case, but we did not encounter that deathly feeling on the way to the Boilers.  We stopped at a small brick building and tried to see inside, but it was too dark.  We decided to use the night vision on the handy cam to peek in.  When Erin asks if she should use the night vision to look in, a voice appears on the audio recordings.  Listen for it at about 5 seconds:

We found the Boilers, and set up for another EVP session.  At this site, several of us again felt the strong negative feeling that we felt in the Power Room.  For some of us, it was even worse.  After investigating, we learned there are myths and stories about people falling, or even being pushed, into the molten metal, where their bodies would dissolve completely.  There are many gruesome stories about different locations all over the facility, but that is best saved for an upcoming article.

Overall, we had a great time checking out this historic site, and introducing ourselves to its ghosts and memories.  Right next to Sloss Furnaces is a brewery called Back Forty Beer Co. where we went to have a drink and talk about our experience, and try to shake off that feeling of violent death.

Upcoming Articles:
Personal experience write ups by all members in attendance.
Brief History of Sloss Furnaces and its reported hauntings.

Only two of us knew the reason we had come to investigate what we chose to call "the Creekwood House" on February 9th, 2019. The three others had not been looped in. This was so that anything they picked up intuitively wasn't something they remembered being told by Meridith and Erin.
​
The client, a 33 year old woman, described the situation as this: The Creekwood House was her home from about 13-23 years of age, and was still her mother's house. Sitting in the small tile-floored office as a teenager, the client would often feel like something big and black was standing in the doorway, staring at her. It caused a deep sense of fear and dread, and she often would wait for it to go away before leaving the room. She couldn't even bear to look toward it. The office was connected to the living room by double doors, and the client could have left through those doors instead, if not for her sense that the living room felt so creepy as well. The big black figure was never seen with the client's eyes, though admittedly she never tried to look very hard at the doorway when it was there.  She simply "knew" it was there.

In addition to the large black figure based in the house, the client reported the feeling of being watched, resulting in intense fear, while outside at night.  It seemed like whatever it was watched from a specific place in the woods near the corner of the house.

Upon arriving, the client had asked us to park on the street, and walk up the long driveway to the house. The house was a white and green Cape Cod, set back against dense woods. The deer and squirrels rustled the brush nearby. Once all BCPI members had arrived, and greeted the client and her mother, we made the house's living room our Base Camp. The living room was a cozy-looking place, decorated with lighthouses and a Thomas Kincade painting. There was a full reclining sofa and a reclining armchair, a fireplace and wooden rocking chair. The cozy welcoming aesthetic was completely at odds with BCPI members remarking how uncomfortable and downright creepy the living room felt. Apart from the office, the rest of the house did not share this peculiar on-edge feeling. We performed a baseline EMF test to see if any of the electrics were seriously out of balance and therefore influencing us.  High EMF can cause hallucinations, illness, and discomfort.  But after running the K2 meter all over the room, everything seemed normal.

After doing a couple interviews of members to release on our social media pages, we settled in for our first EVP session of the evening. Kristin set up a flashlight to require only the tiniest touch to turn the light on, to serve as something we could ask the entities of the house to interact with. ​Erin set up the nightvision camcorder to have an angle to see the whole team, only to find out that when she turned the lights off, the nightvision was not working. It had worked perfectly during testing but now was only showing a black screen.  Erin attemped to fix the problem, but nothing seemed to help - not turning it off and back on, making sure the battery was secured, or turning nightshot on and off again.  She gave up and the camera was left to record the black, with a tiny light from the K2 showing on it. The EVP session proceeded.

​During evidence review, we discovered an EVP that only a couple of our DVRs picked up – someone saying something just after Erin says the camera is set up. Only Meridith and Erin's DVRs picked up the voice, and this was also around the time when Meridith began to feel warm hands on her shoulders (the room was rather chilly, so the feeling was very distinct).  What does it sound like to you?

With the session in the living room concluded, we moved to the office/sewing room. This was the room where the client used to feel something watching her. It used to have a large oak desk and bookshelves, but now had been converted into the client's mother's sewing room. There was lots of equipment, cloth and patterns and there was standing room only for the five of us. Erin tried the IR camera again, but no luck. We asked questions for a while, before deciding to take a quick break. Erin took the IR camera and switched out the battery, even though the other one was full. The camera worked, and even worked once switched back to the original battery. The nightshot worked perfectly the rest of the night.

We moved upstairs to the client's old bedroom, and everyone agreed that compared to the eerie living room and office, this room felt so much nicer and safer. The client did report that she used to carry a cat with her up to her bedroom because "cats keep spirits away". We did a baseline and an EVP session in the bedroom, and decided to start chatting about random things a bit, because occasionally entities will chime in on a simple chat.

That session concluded, we moved out to the front yard, and stood exactly where the client said she always feels something watching her. The video from this section is lost, seemingly never turned on to begin with. We stood in the woods, in the pitch black. The K2 meter and two DVRs lay on the pine straw and leaves in front of us. We asked several questions, but it seemed as though nothing was there at all. Sam got the feeling that something had moved away from us toward the fence. Plenty of deer and smaller animals live in that area, so it's hard to be sure what was seen or heard.  But, when we reviewed the recording, we found this from the time we were outside:

It would seem someone was indeed outside the house as well as within.  What do you think it's saying?
​
Our sensitive team member, Amber, picked up a lot of information without knowing anything about this site previously. For example, in the house, she noticed a big, black presence that caused feelings of deep dread and anxiety. This was very accurate to what the client reported experiencing.

Throughout the investigation, we seemed to have trouble with our electronics, from the night vision camera not working, then suddenly working again, to strange electric sounds and surges picked up through the DVRs.

There appears to be definite activity in the house and on the land outside of it.  We have no way to tell at this point whether it's once-human entities, or land spirits, or maybe even one of each.  Regardless, there seem to be two different entities, one inside and one outside.  Returning to the Creekwood House in the future might be a good idea, to see if we can get to the bottom of it, now that we know where to focus.

Members' Notes:

Kristin S.
Creekwood was an interesting location. I did not have any personal experiences and did not have the same feelings as some of my teammates, but we did end up getting some compelling evidence when I thought for sure we wouldn't have any. Just goes to show that even when things appear quiet, there may just be something waiting for the opportunity to communicate.  

Amber D.
My first impression of the Creekwood House was that most of the rooms were quite welcoming, sans the living room and office/sewing room. Those rooms had a different feel altogether. When we started our first EVP session, I got the creeping sense of a tall, broad, dark shadowy figure behind me, whispering in my head. A sense of dread and lightning trickled down my spine, and my body felt frozen with a foreign invader that seemed to be an exo skeleton preventing me from moving. The room was very cold, but I was quite warm. The feeling took about 30 minutes to subside, slowly diminishing over that time, but didn’t leave me completely until we finished our EVP sessions in the living room and office.

I felt like we were being watched in the bedroom from the window facing the side yard, where we did our last EVP. The room itself felt safe, but it felt like something was creeping on the outside of the house. I felt the same in the sewing room, with the big windows facing the yard.

Sam M.
I came to the Creekwood house with low expectations; I was hoping to experience something paranormal, but I was prepared to sit in the dark and not feel/see/hear anything, especially since this was my first investigation. That did not happen. From the weird glitches that happened with our equipment to feeling extremely weird and heavy in the living room to feeling watched while we were outside, the Creekwood house delivered and was an incredible first paranormal investigative experience. I am glad that our sensitive Amber gave me a grounding necklace before the investigation, it made me feel safe during the weirdest moments of the investigation.

January 18th, 2019 found the Black Cat crew hiking down a dark dirt trail under a mostly full moon.  The destination was Corpsewood Manor, in Trion, GA.  Corpsewood is well known in the area and by the paranormal community as the house where Charles Scudder, his partner Joseph Odom and their two dogs, Beelzebub and Arsenath, were brutally murdered in 1982.

The path was pitch black save for our flashlights, and there was a slight mist in the air that gave the woods an eerie glow.  Our destination was about 15 minutes away from where we parked, deep into the woods.  No car could go down this path, as someone had created dirt barriers to prevent such a thing.  With burritos in hand, and glow sticks around our necks, we charged forward, not letting the darkness or remoteness of the area deter us.

When we arrived, we were greeted first by the ruins of two brick columns to either side of the path.  A slight turn to the left, and a lifting of our flashlights, and we spotted a large, brick, two-story structure.

We entered the group of structures, all ruined ever since a fire had ravaged the abandoned house years ago.   We set up base camp in the middle of the structures, along the back wall of the house proper.  First things first, having left at 3:30 pm and it now being almost 6, we were very hungry.  We sat down to enjoy our to-go burritos and bowls from Willy's.  We turned a DVR (Digital Voice Recorder) on while we ate and chatted about the location.  The atmosphere, as we kept remarking to each other throughout the investigation, was calm and peaceful and not the slightest bit creepy.  

One team member got the impression of someone asking "Did you bring anything for us?"  We reassured the location that we did indeed bring offerings for them - wine, cigarettes, and big Milkbones for the two dogs.

After eating and getting our gear prepared, we each began to wander around the ruins.  Kristin did baseline readings on the whole location, and her EMF meter found nothing out of the ordinary.  Amber,  on her first time out on an investigation, operated as a Sensitive.  She knew very little about Corpsewood or the murders, which was deliberate to make sure whatever she picked up was new to her.  She checked the manor out and wrote down all of her impressions, several of which were very accurate and interesting.  Erin and Meridith walked around taking pictures, with Erin holding a flashlight up to help light Meridith's shot.  

So far it was a much quieter night than one would expect from a location where something so terrible had happened.  Unexpectedly, the whole team felt very at ease while in Charles and Joey's house.  

After wandering and checking things out, we sat down to do an EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) session and see if we could catch the gentlemen or the dogs speaking to us.  Unfortunately, during the EVP session, our K2 meter never left the green light, and we only captured a strange sound somewhere between a car horn and a train whistle. 

Our EVP session finished, we explored a little more and took a few more photos before we packed up and headed out.  We shared a toast with Charles and Joseph with the remaining wine.  Before leaving, we picked up a lot of trash, such as beer cans and bottles disrespectfully left there.

Once we got home, we all began to review our footage and recordings.  Kristin discovered two Class B EVPs which occurred while we were first arriving and setting up.  Click here to check them out.

We will go back to Corpsewood someday, to take better photos in the light and perhaps to pick up the smashed glass right outside the front door, because Amber received that it "causes the dogs' feet to hurt."  As good a reason as any to go back!